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The least Zelda-like Zelda

Before you all type Breath of the Wild at the speed of light i want you to think about every Zelda game.

BotW may have a lot of new elements and not play like a Zelda but there are other games which can come off kind of alien or just feel as if they didn't do what it is to be Zelda quite right.

For me the Minish Cap really doesnt do it for me. I don't like the shrinking mechanic, any of the characters or the story. The whole thing feels 'off' to me. Kind of like a fanfiction, its Zelda but its not right.

Which games come to your mind of not being Zelda but not?
 

MW7

Joined
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Majora's Mask was the first thing to come to my mind since it's time mechanic and emphasis on sidequests is particularly unique. Most Zelda games are epic clashes of good and evil, and MM is on a smaller scale. It's a game built on a side adventure basically. I love it, but it is different.
 

Castle

Ch!ld0fV!si0n
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Pan-decepticon-transdeliberate-selfidentifying-sodiumbased-extraexistential-temporal anomaly
I guess we'd have to define "Zelda-like"

To me, Zelda doesn't have much of an identity - not anymore. You can say a game is "Zelda-like" the same way everyone says a game is "Souls-like" (way too many comparisons to Souls getting thrown around by my reckoning) or "Rogue-like" or "Doom-like" or "GTA-like" etc. Other games in other genres are doing the Zelda thing to more extent than even a Zelda game.

And the Zelda series has largely lacked a coherent identity. Zelda II was the black sheep early on and most every game after that has tried to resemble the first game while simultaneously becoming more linear and establishing the Zelda "formula". Majora's Mask was the first major departure after that, but then Wind Waker was an even greater departure from the rest of the series. By that time fans just seem to have conceded that the series is malleable, which is why we look back on Zelda II far less harshly and why BotW was so well received and Wind Waker is accepted now.

So when I ask myself this question, I consider "Which Zelda game didn't have to be a Zelda game in the first place or could have started as something else?" And to that I say Wind Waker. Wind Waker really has little to nothing to do with the Zelda formula or fiction. Not only is it a stylistic departure but it is also a thematic departure. Think about the story and characters, if you replaced Link, Zelda, and Ganon with original characters and remove all references to Hyrule would this still be a Zelda game? No. It doesn't have to be. It could be any given Epic Pirate Adventure with Zelda-like structure and gameplay elements. Also consider a game like Okami, which is undeniably Zelda-like. If you replace Amaterasu with Link and Orochi with Ganon ("calamity" ganon, anyone?) would that make Okami a Zelda game? Or take Batman Arkham City. If you replace Batman with Link, Joker with Ganon and Arkham City with Hyrule, boom! It's basically a Zelda game.

Spirit Tracks is another not Zelda game for obvious reasons that are obvious. The only thing I can point to a Zelda game having that makes it inherently Zelda is open free-form exploration and a certain look and feel established by the early games and completely ignored by WW, SS, and BotW. You could also point to the story and lore as it pertains to the rest of the series overall, in which case WW, SS and BotW would also be outcasts. The question I ask is, "Is this relevant lore? Does it tie into or influence anything we've come to know from other entries in the series? Or does this particular game's lore have nothing to do with, or does it even contradict established lore? Does it further our understanding of the history of Hyrule and its characters?" To that effect SS actually *does* ... just in dumb ways that I think are stupid. And in a lot of other ways it doesn't. The Sky Chickens were wat now? Oh, okay. Pointless to know. Nobody ever asked why the Hylian crest had a bird anyway. Lots of crests have birds. Wind Waker - for all its talk of Hyrule - actually has nothing to do with Hyrule other than being a plot macguffin. In fact, Wind Waker goes out of its way to effectively retcon Hyrule as we knew it as pretense for making the game a pirate adventure. "Zelda's" presence is shoehorned in by effectively overwriting an already established character, and Link and Ganon could have been anyone.

Majora's Mask might not be set in Hyrule, but it is a continuation of the Hero of Time's adventure. It furthers his character arc. Therefore it is relevant to the rest of the series by virtue of dealing with a major central character in the legend.

Breath of the Wild might not look or play like a typical Zelda game. It even goes so far as to buck the series standard formula (which by many accounts was getting stale, I think it deviates too much) and it really is any given OPIN WALRD!! Ar-Pee-Gee with "Zelda" slapped on the box. And its lore also bears little relevance to the rest of the series. It even goes so far as to disregard Ganon as a character. They could have done so much more with the Yiga - that stuff's interesting and relevant - but they didn't.
 
Joined
Sep 21, 2014
Location
Michigan
Majora's Mask was the first thing to come to my mind since it's time mechanic and emphasis on sidequests is particularly unique. Most Zelda games are epic clashes of good and evil, and MM is on a smaller scale. It's a game built on a side adventure basically. I love it, but it is different.
-moon is going to crush the world-
"smaller scale"

-rapid blinking-

(not trying to say you're wrong, I just found it really funny)
 

DarkestLink

Darkest of all Dark Links
Joined
Oct 28, 2012
BOTW. Even Zelda's Adventure plays more like a Zelda game. And that's not to say BOTW is the one I hate the most--that still belongs to aLttP--but it's the furthest from what a Zelda game is.
 

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